'Dig for Victory' garden for Barnstaple town centre

By awilshaw

VOLUNTEERS will be asked to help turn a Barnstaple town centre garden into a Second World War-style "dig for victory" allotment plot, complete with 1940s tools, seeds — and bomb shelter.

Marines from Chivenor have been asked to help install an Anderson bomb shelter in the garden. Children from local schools will be urged to get involved in the project, called Their Past Your Future, which won a £10,000 government grant from the Museums, Libraries and Archive Council.

Julian Vayne, the Museum of Barnstaple and North Devon's education officer, said the fenced-off area outside the museum will be cleared this winter and local people with memories of the Second World War will be invited to share their memories of the conflict.

Mr Vayne has bought a genuine Second World War Anderson shelter (four sheets of reinforced corrugated iron) for £50 on eBay. A section of the garden will be cleared and turned into a vegetable patch, with help from the pupils of Orchard Vale school.

He said: "Hopefully, by summer 2009, the shelter will be in and the traditional World War Two vegetable garden will be in. We are going to make sure the seeds are varieties that would have been used back then.

"We can also use the garden to talk about sustainability and peak oil and food production. It's not just about the war."

And the tools which will be used to maintain the wartime garden will hopefully be the same implements used between 1939 and 1945, to help make the project as authentic as possible.

The garden will become a permanent feature and will be used by schools, community groups as well as being open to the public.

Mr Vayne wants anyone with memories of any war, not necessarily the Second World War, to contribute to the museum's oral history archive.

He said: "We have got people who have been in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Northern Ireland and the Falklands and we are looking for these people to come forward, and also people who have got other experiences, such as the people left behind."

And anyone who had an allotment during the war, anywhere in the country, is particularly welcome to share their memories of life "on the plot".

● THE wartime garden in Barnstaple will include references to key historical artefacts, including:

● The Anderson shelter was a small, cheap, air raid shelter designed for private gardens. More than 1.5 million Andersons were distributed in 1939 to people at risk of Nazi bombs. They were given free to poor people. Andersons were 6ft 6in by 4ft 6in, made of metal and half-buried. When the Germans started bombing by night the government told people to sleep in their Andersons and air raid sirens would warn of approaching attacks. They were damp and dark.

● Dig for victory! was the name given to a Government campaign which encouraged people to grow food and keep animals on allotments. Food imports were disrupted by German attacks on merchant ships and food rationing was also introduced.

● To get involved in this project in any way, phone the museum on 01271 346747.